An indie game studio in Moldova gets social ROI with RiteForge
They were lost in the woods
Social media marketing can be tough for a small company with limited resources. Moreover, some industries demand more communication with current and potential customers. Unsurprisingly, the owners or marketers of such firms might feel lost and in need of some powerful social media time-savers.
Meet the main protagonist: Magicindie, an independent game developement company in Moldova, mainly focusing on the free to play market. Magicindie has two games released, Cyberline and ShadowQuest RPG. Their social media marketing strategy has been haphazard, but clearly ineffective, at least the owner recognized an urgent need to make changes. That is when they found RiteKit.
They began with work on their two main twitter accounts: Magicindie and ShadowQuest and two Facebook pages. And then, there were the iTunes and Google Play links.
One may see how the ShadowQuest Twitter stream looked in the end of June. However, the most intriguing part was the Tweets, which were crafted with much care, but did not manage connect with an audience.
Thorough analysis showed that the posts, done by the studio, to both social media sites (FB and Twitter) had been rather irregular and not always relevant. Their posts have not been catching enough, nor had they had used variety in their hashtag choices, that would have facilitated discovery from those who might have been interested in their products. Low daily game installs were the result.
Their Twitter Analytics illustrates the reach of their Twitter accounts over a one month period (and 28 days, in detail). We can see that the ShadowQuest account is far more successful in terms of Tweet impressions. This shows how they were doing before any social media optimization tools were used:
The game producer of Magicindie, Evgheni Caraion, decided to start using RiteKit in order to improve the marketing strategy of the company, in general. Evgheni explains:
The gaming industry is very personal. People want to know how you are developing your game, who you are, who are the people behind the game. If you do not use the social media in the proper way, you will not be able to spread the word about your game. Consequently, Evgheni began to use RiteKit daily to schedule and auto-enhance posts for Twitter and Facebook. Evgheni admits that at first he did not feel confident with his social media marketing. However, after he had learned how to work with RiteKit, he has that everything was pretty straightforward to him.
One could assess their success rate by looking at the number of installs (in Google Play), which is primarily a result of social media promotion. And then, there were the connections he has been making, as Evgheni shared with us:
The biggest impact was the fact that I managed to connect with people that are relevant for us from the gaming industry. There were guys from Orange Bison and other twitter and youtube personalities. They connected with me after they saw the posts I had made, of course, using RiteTag, RiteForge and RitePush. Ah, but how? It’s all in Auto-Enhance, and the call-to-action added to page URLs shared in posts.
During the conversation with the representatives of Orange Bison (a game news and review website for indie game developers), Magicindie managed to get a positive review for their game being published online. It is important to acknowledge that reviews are significant when it comes to the indie game development industry.
As one might notice, there is a steady increase in the number of daily installs by device, starting from the late June. Consequently, the overall customer base of the company is growing:
According to Twitter Analytics, Magicindie account was more successful in showing the better results after using RiteTag, RiteForge and RitePush. It could be partially explained by the fact that Magicindie account was a little bit neglected by Evgheni previously. On average, every tweet in June received 161.7 impressions, 6.7 profile visits, 0.2 mentions, while in July — 156.25 impressions, 7.2 profile visits, 0.32 mentions. Interestingly, the ShadowQuest account was mentioned in July in almost 25% more often than in June, whereas the number of Tweets was smaller. Nevertheless, it is quite soon to make a final judgement because the social media handling is not a stable process.
All in all, it is normal and probably quite common to feel lost with social media marketing but it is a a risk to your long-term growth to do nothing about the situation. The case of Magicindie shows that with strategic social media optimization, the soft-sell of Rite.ly, and the automation of RitePush, one can achieve many goals. The RiteKit tools save time for the work you really love while optimizing everything you share to social for search withing social networks. Beyond this, the ability to reduce self-promotion and reap the benefits of soft-selling with a call-to-action on URLs in your posts connects those reading material relevant to your audience with your products and ultimately with your company and even you.
Social media marketing wins in the long run when done thoughtfully, and with the perfect blend of tools, but can only reap rewards when directed by someone like Evgheni Caraion, who loves gaming and game development — and these are what it takes to curate content for his company’s social stream. This is what it takes, ultimately: industry and customer know-how. When we, at RiteKit, look at his forays and achievements in social, we see our own successes mirrored, but in an industry we do not know. Before you tap start in the playing fields of Facebook, Twitter and beyond, remember that the winner will be the person whose social sharing shows love for his industry.
We hope you’ll try ShadowQuest (iTunes and Google Play) and ask Evgheni for a teaser of his new crew’s game!